


Pursuant

by Snowgrouse



Series: Pursuivant [2]
Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Conrad Veidt/Basil Rathbone, German Actor RPF - Fandom, Old Hollywood RPF
Genre: 1940s, Anal Sex, Androgynous male character, Androgyny, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bisexuality, Blindfolds, Bondage, Closeted Character, Closeted Character/Unabashedly Queer Character, Closeted Even To Himself Baz, Come Drinking, Dominant Androgynous Male Character, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Gags, Gayngst, Healing Sex, Homosexual Anal Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Liberating Sex, M/M, Old Hollywood - Freeform, PWP, Period Attitudes Towards Sexuality and Gender, Period-Typical Homophobia, Poetic, Repressed Baz, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rimming, Romance, Romanticism, Slash, Unabashedly Bisexual Veidt, Veidtbone - Freeform, prose poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:31:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: There are but Connie's hands in his hair as Basil leans in to nuzzle that which the morning had stolen from him: the fragrances of must and of sweat and of sperm and of piss and of musk and of moss. He sobs as he fills his mouth with the heat, the salt, the blood-iron taste of Connie's flesh; but then, even his sobs are stopped as this blessed flesh swells in his mouth and fills him, fills him so that there is no room left in him for regret or pain or sorrow.The wet, rainy earth swells up to meet him, swallowing him into its womb; the room darkens and again he is in a nightly forest: this thanks to Connie having blessed him with a makeshift blindfold, the silken sash of his dressing gown pulled over his eyes. And another blessing, the velvet ropes of the bedcurtains, tying his hands to the bedposts: a silken handkerchief in his mouth a third, a holy trinity of absolution, dissolution of all his guilt.Connie made me, Connie overwhelmed me, you know how persistent he can be.Thus, he is by his own desire taken, claimed: the forest that had represented all that he'd denied in himself now taking him in the form of a man.





	Pursuant

**Author's Note:**

> A direct continuation of [Pursuivant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13751250): Connie comes to claim what's his. Will not make much sense if you haven't read the first part. 
> 
> Thanks to Versaphile for the beta.

_Hark, your heartbeat stops in my hand_  
_Hark, my dagger will not be denied._  
\--Rumi

***  


"Mr. Veidt is at the door, sir."

The smell of the dying forest, the taste of lye upon his tongue, the woodsmoke--Basil shivers as they wash over him a tidal wave, as if he had never left them behind at all.

"Shall we tell him you are not in, sir?"

He but groans and drags himself out of bed, pulls on a dressing gown and begins to stagger towards the bathroom. "No. Make him wait a few minutes, and when you hear the toilet flushing, ask him to come upsta--"

But Connie is already through the bedroom door, Keiko stuttering apologies; Connie with his big, dazzling, crooked-toothed smile, slipping Keiko a note of a very large denomination. Keiko looks as if she is about to die of embarrassment, but Basil is only thankful for that as he tells her it's all right and sends her on her way; he hopes her shame has prevented her from noticing his state, from seeing or smelling the stains on his pyjamas. 

Connie, however, but _grins._

In one reality, Basil dashes into the bathroom, washes, shaves; he and Connie go off to the golf course just as intended, as old friends.

In another, Basil does _not_ dash for the bathroom, but keeps on standing there: standing before a Connie still grinning with his hands in his pockets, his nostrils fluttering, his eyelashes sharp as he takes in Basil's state with his piercing, all-too-knowing gaze. 

Connie slinks his weight from one foot to another, cocking his head outrageously, his lips pursed out in a devilish, merciless little croon. "Dreaming of me?"

Two realities, two possible courses of action flicker before Basil, splitting, branching, both fleeing from him before his eyes: it's like one of those nightmares of trying to catch a train, except now there are two, and he has to choose. 

_Choose for me,_ a voice within him says, a voice pigeon-livered, a voice hateful. _I can't do it,_ the panic of one in a trench about to go over the top: _I can't, I can't!_

The lock on the door clicks; Connie looks down upon him with eyes that understand, eyes that know, eyes that Basil hates, _hates_ for being like this, allowing Basil this: having the audacity to not mock him, even, let alone judge him for now falling to his knees.

There are but Connie's hands in his hair as Basil leans in to nuzzle that which the morning had stolen from him: the fragrances of must and of sweat and of sperm and of piss and of musk and of moss. He sobs as he fills his mouth with the heat, the salt, the blood-iron taste of Connie's flesh; but then, even his sobs are stopped as this blessed flesh swells in his mouth and fills him, fills him so that there is no room left in him for regret or pain or sorrow. 

The wet, rainy earth swells up to meet him, swallowing him into its womb; the room darkens and again he is in a nightly forest: this thanks to Connie having blessed him with a makeshift blindfold, the silken sash of his dressing gown pulled over his eyes. And another blessing, the velvet ropes of the bedcurtains, tying his hands to the bedposts: a silken handkerchief in his mouth a third, a holy trinity of absolution, dissolution of all his guilt. _Connie made me, Connie overwhelmed me, you know how persistent he can be._

Thus, he is by his own desire taken, claimed: the forest that had represented all that he'd denied in himself now taking him in the form of a man. The only man he's ever loved like a woman; the only man who has ever made him feel like a woman himself, even more so now that he opens Basil's body so tenderly, sweetly with fingers and tongue. 

Tongue, a tongue upon his anus and Basil is revolted; yet the scent of must grows stronger in his nostrils, becoming a taste in his mouth: he tastes himself upon Connie's tongue, so strange, not at all like he'd expected, metallic rather than foul. And then, the scent of glycerine, the sound of a tube's cap being screwed back on that makes all hair on his body stand on end: he is grateful for the handkerchief, screaming into it in his panic, falling into absolute hysteria as he is penetrated. 

Yet Connie lets him scream through it all, lets him toss and thrash out all his horrors, all his fears, like exhausting a colt to break it: mercilessly, yet with the gentlemost of thrusts does he keep on making way in Basil's flesh with his own, seeking an opening into the darkness inside of Basil's body so as to finally merge it with his own. The forest within him and without him, his own darkness penetrating him with Connie as its channel, merging Basil's subconscious with his conscious mind: Connie the aptmost symbol of such integration, never having himself split the two, the man who has always been at once the demon and the angel, the Jekyll and the Hyde, upon the screen and outside it.

Connie, Connie, always having represented to Basil sensuality, carnality, a boldness and a truthfulness bordering on insanity: "I could never be as frank as you, as honest as you," he'd drunkenly confessed to Connie once; "I would fall apart, unable to contain it--how _do_ you not go mad?"

And it is a laughter mad, mad that now curls in his ears as Connie chuckles atop him, having finally settled inside of him: Basil's arse spasms painfully, yet even that pain is a blessing, already louder than the pain of guilt in his chest. Again, his muscles spasm of their own volition and he feels sick, his stomach somersaulting; yet at the same time, it is as if all of his body, his very viscera were now clutching at Connie, grabbing at him, trying desperately to drag Connie inside of him and to keep him there; oh, how they are relishing their own impalement, their own goring upon Connie's sex. 

But it is a tenderness, a shocking tenderness with which Connie now gathers Basil unto himself, settles himself between Basil's thighs, picking up and entwining Basil's legs about his waist as easily as if they were a garment. Soft as moss, Connie's pudendum between Basil's legs; soft as ferns, his fingers as they lift Basil's lax genitals onto his belly. He is being gathered, harvested, Connie weighing him in his palm like fruit; again he feels the taste of woodsmoke within raindrops as Connie's lips and tongue, soft as leaves, touch his mouth on either side of the handkerchief. The warmth of Connie's hand, its gentle cupping and stroking like sunlight, ripening him, filling him; Basil cries out into Connie's mouth so loudly he flutters the handkerchief, Connie _giggling_ as the silk tickles his face.

"Is that better?" Connie murmurs, softly moving within him, clearly not expecting an answer as his voice is that of a parent soothing a weeping child: "Is that better? Is that better?" he whispers tenderly, with the knowledge that it is, _he is,_ warmth now radiating into the entirety of Basil's body from his hips. There is only a little discomfort left, but mostly that of Basil's body being overwhelmed by another's moving into him, inside of him: the burn from the glycerine is nothing in comparison to the impact on his internal organs, his breath stopping at each one of Connie's thrusts, all of this to his body at once familiar while alien and strange. 

For it's not only heat that now rises within him, but such emotion, such affection, such sentiment that he marvels at it: how mere friction, how mere pressure applied to the inside of a body can make one feel like this? Oh, but he knows the name of this emotion, and it's _Love,_ even if Shame tries to press its hand over it, to suffocate his thoughts of it. Yet, how can he deny Love when it's rolling through his body in waves, lapping warmly at his limbs, unfurling in his torso, curling out of his fingertips with each and every one of Connie's movements like the tide?

And it is now that he understands women, understands them better than he has ever done before, understands why they cannot separate sex from love: he even feels ashamed for the littleness, the shallowness of what the man feels during sex. What he'd been ignorant of all this time, not knowing how it felt to make love with your whole body--what a fool he'd been every time he'd shuddered at the thought of sodomites, winced at the rumours he'd heard of Connie wearing dresses, of him playing the woman to men. Indeed, how could a man have ever been satisfied with but a mere rub at the front, a shallow, external pleasure when this feels ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more wonderful: pleasure washing over his whole body? Is _this_ what all men fear as they beat up the fairies and the queers--that they'd get addicted to this? Because already he knows he is addicted, never wanting to give this up, now; never, ever.

And now, he struggles: he spits at the handkerchief, squirms at the blindfold, hoping Connie will be able to make out his muffled requests to remove them. He owes to himself the truth, he owes to Connie the truth; Connie himself having brought to him the truth, embodying the truth--

Grinning, Truth pulls away silk from Basil's mouth and eyes, tossing them aside; Connie ceases thrusting and rests his full weight on Basil, his heartbeat astonishingly calm against Basil's pounding, galloping one. With gentle hands, he cups Basil's head as if Basil had just fallen and hurt himself, strokes his hair like drawing from it dry leaves; he waits until Basil's breathing evens, feeding to him sips of his own: pouring past his lips breath warm, breath tasting of coffee and tobacco and must. 

The sun has risen high into the sky, dappling Connie's irises like its rays were playing upon lake-water; he looks so happy, his face so close to Basil's that his eyes are now crossed.

"Hello," is all Basil can say; his nervous laughter but makes his muscles clench around Connie, a ripple of what seems like pleasure fluttering over the muscles of Connie's face as he returns Basil's smile.

"Hello," and Connie glances at the ropes, at Basil's bound wrists; he raises his eyebrow in query. 

Basil looks at his hands, too, flexing his fingers; again, he looks at Connie.

It is then that a smile--much wider than the one that had preceded it--spreads out upon Basil's face. Some ancient harlot laughs inside of him, a laughter echoing through him all the way from Babylon, and he shakes his head.

Basil shakes his head, and Connie's laughter is deep and dark, one that has recognised its sister: in his eyes, Basil thinks he can even spy something like pride, the pride of a seasoned courtesan approving of a young maiden she has just initiated into Venus's art. 

Now, seeming impatient, Connie begins to move once more, taking Basil's mouth in a fierce kiss. How he has managed to restrain himself so far, Basil simply cannot understand; but now, finally, Connie seems to have had enough of restraint. 

And that's what Basil wants, too, wants back his satyr, his wood-sprite, his incubus: he would not dream of having his bonds loosened, would not dream of depriving himself or Connie of this. 

Yet once Connie begins to truly thrust inside of him, truly _take_ him so that Basil's hips are lifted off the mattress, the pleasure so blinds Basil that he can no longer think. Leaf-crowns, moss-cloaks fall off as they become but naked, red, rutting, sweating, musk-rich flesh, all male, male; all of Basil burning, burning. Each time Connie slides back and strikes at the white-hot core of pleasure at the centre of his hips, Basil's erection grows harder and harder, a hardness he hasn't known since he was a teenager, a hardness that should not be possible, but is-- 

It's painful, the tightness, now more painful than the friction in his guts; skin stretched drum-tight over flesh rock-hard, a pressure inside of his hips not unlike that of a full bladder. He howls into Connie's mouth, verily stabbed with pleasure-pain each time Connie rams home, high, high; still, he spreads his legs for it, lifts his hips for it, needing more, more: like some steam engine with the heat at its core driving up its thrusts, mounting speed, faster and faster, high, high--

And as Connie's hand, his slippery, wet hand wraps about the head of Basil's cock--how on earth his palm can tug at the shaft, rub at it, press it, fuck it while his fingers simultaneously flick at the tip, slick, slick, Basil just doesn't know. He doesn't know, doesn't know if he's coming or pissing or dying but he is unravelling, an enormous pressure bursting out of him as fluid, as thick white sperm. Connie's chuckles, Connie's thrusts crash over him and into him as waves upon cliffs and Basil is but sea foam, but spume, but white splashing and spattering and spraying on his chest. His chest, and then--oh, the _ridiculous bastard_ \--Connie's crooked teeth, his shameless red mouth as he bends double and _drinks_ him in, _fucks_ Basil's come out of him with his hips, only to catch it in the bowl of his cuppèd tongue.

Basil is sobbing without breathing, outside of himself, barely conscious as Connie falls into him in turn: Connie curls his entire body against him, kneads his flesh so tightly into Basil's that they become but the one flesh; chest, belly, arms, legs, skin against skin against skin until there is but the one heat, but the one man in this embrace, one, one. Their limbs knotted, bound, Connie's heat surging into him, the blood in Basil's aching hips now beats, sings around Connie: Basil's heartbeat surrounding him, womblike as with each one of its pulses, Connie pulses into him in turn. A low lament against Basil's shoulder, a voice shockingly, tenderly high and feline as Connie's belly undulates against Basil's; a tremor and a keen as his long fingers clutch at Basil's arms, as his hips beat and spasm their last. Barely, barely can Basil feel Connie's ejaculation inside of his guts--the feeling, the thought of it nauseating, but all the more so for its devastating intimacy, far deeper than what could ever be from a stroke or a frot or a suck got: _he is now swimming inside of my body, now being absorbed into my flesh,_ he thinks hysterically, _he now swimming within my blood;_ a shudder of helplessness passing through his body, all hair on his skin standing on end even as he lies bathed there in Connie's sweat. 

_Please, let this be a dream,_ Basil thinks; _please, please, please,_ for he could not bear the implications, bear this love he now feels, bear being so claimed, so taken, so ripped open and so bare, bare, bare. He closes his eyes and swallows a sob, again trembling against Connie, that tremor only making him feel more acutely Connie's weight atop his muscles, Connie's weight sinking into his very bones; another spasm, this time of pain in his guts as Connie remains hard inside of him, Connie solid and real, literally having impaled Basil with that which he'd always wanted but cannot bear, bear, bear. 

But then, the weight is gone, and the silk is once more over his eyes, his mouth: his arms ache from having been tied up for so long. The wonderful heat inside of him is gone, only an ugly wet noise escaping from his arse, now; a noise uglier exuding from his nose as his next sob comes out wet with tears, phlegm, hot. He is aching on the inside, empty, devastated; he feels--no, _knows_ that he has made the biggest mistake in his life: only now does he realise that Connie, in his withdrawing from him, has just torn his very heart out of his chest. 

Like a child thinks that his bad thoughts have caused something bad to happen, Basil is sure that he is responsible for Connie having disappeared. And now, _Wait!_ He cries inside. _I didn't mean it!_ He sobs internally in his panic, thrashing against his bonds, now; kicking so as to get purchase upon the bed, trying to rub his face against his arm so as to tug off the blindfold. _I take back everything I thought, I--_ "Connie," he cries, muffled through his gag. He no longer cares if the servants hear; also, why are the dogs not barking?

A hand upon his chest, cupped right over that aching, screaming gap where his heart used to be; a hand long-fingered, tender. 

A weight shifting upon the bed, this hand upon his chest pressing, pressing; its warmth solid and soothing, as if his heart were being replaced in his chest: his heart, laid in, tucked in like a child into his bed. 

_Connie._

Thin lips upon his cheek, a laughter quiet, wistful, a little melancholy: the laughter of one contemplating things that could never be. "I am going to count to three," this soft voice says, "and then, you will be free." Fingertips playing at his gag, at his blindfold; a lingering, again wistful caress from Basil's wrist down his arm and again over his chest. "But promise me something, Bes."

 _Bes,_ the way Connie always pronounces his name; Basil tries very hard to not make a noise, the slightest noise, so that he will not miss what Connie is saying. Therefore, he but nods.

When the voice speaks again, it is no longer soft, but so strong and so powerful and so firm it's terrifying: in its love, in its tenderness, in its care it is a voice devastating, shaking Basil to his core. 

"Basil... You may run away from her, run away from everything else... but do not ever run away from me. Do you understand?"

And Connie doesn't say _"I couldn't bear it otherwise,"_ or _"I should very much like you to not run away from me"_ \--there is no conditional here, no negotiation, no loophole left here for cowardice. _For in running away from me, you are running away from yourself,_ the words echo into Basil's mind without being spoken, for does truth need to be spoken out loud when it has just been making love to you, has but moments ago swum inside of you, is still holding your heart in its hand?

Connie's sperm trickles out from between Basil's buttocks; his heart beats against Connie's palm once, twice, times three. 

And it is then that something inside of him breaks: tears flow down into his ears and a miserable, pitiful, child's howl now breaks against his ribs. Yet Connie, indomitable Connie captures that sob, too, in his palm: he kisses Basil's ears, his nose, those hated uglinesses of his with a tenderness that hurts, sears him deep into his bones, deep.

"I promise," Basil whispers onto Connie's lips through the silk; _I promise,_ his blood beats through his well-loved prick and his well-loved hips; _I promise,_ his heart beats against Connie's hand.

"That's all I needed to hear," a soft meaow dissolving upon the morning sunlight. 

And the silk is gone, the ropes are gone and the dogs are barking around the bed, jumping around Basil's feet. The sunlight stings his eyes, the hustle and bustle of the house alive and awake underneath him and around him; in the distance, the sound of an automobile, and perhaps that's the engine of Connie's sportscar, he cannot be sure. 

He throws himself back onto the pillows and blinks, absent-mindedly stroking the dogs as they gather round to nurse him; there's the smell of coffee coming from downstairs and he is already late for something--that, he is sure of. He holds his eyes open as long as he can, knowing that when he closes them again, it will be the nightly forest and the moss and the chase he will be plunged into, again; knows whose face it will be burning as an afterimage upon the insides of his eyelids. He strains, strains until his eyes fill with tears from their staring; when he closes them again and lets the darkness take him, tears draw streaks upon his temples, pooling in his ears with their companions, not letting him forget. 

He covers his face with his hands and lets out a juddering sigh. _It was all a dream._ It must have been. Didn't he schedule golf with Connie for Tuesday--?

"Sir?"

The maid. Quickly, he pulls the covers over himself. Keiko's been told not to disturb him, and guiltily, meekly she stands outside the door even now: it must be for a good reason that she is now addressing him. 

"Yes, what is it?" he barks.

"Mr. Veidt is at the door, sir."

The smell of the dying forest, the taste of lye upon his tongue, the woodsmoke--he shivers as they wash over him a tidal wave, as if he had never left them at all. 

He licks his lips, swallows; he clutches at the sheets.

"Let him in," he croaks, his voice shaking; "let him in."

 _Connie._

Connie and his crooked-toothed grin, Connie and his slinking hips, Connie and the lock clicking so that they are alone, shut out from the world; the curtains drawn so that again it is night, night they are embracing in, the night. Connie, Connie and that big, uninhibited laughter of his; those big, warm hands upon his heart and Basil laughs, too, laughs into Connie's love that is the forest, laughs into his woodsmoke-and-moss kiss.

***

END

***


End file.
